


Her Reflection

by Lola_McGee



Series: Her Self [4]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alex Danvers has issues y'all, Alex Danvers is Queer, Alex Danvers is Valid, Also because basically everyone thinks Alex swears a lot, Also no Jess the Secretary, And Alex being Queer actually matters a lot, And deserves to be loved, And she needs to have them seen to, And that one is actually canon, Angst, Because ur character study is only srs if u swear, F/F, Implied Masturbation, Internalized Homophobia, Like there are probably warnings I'm missing, Minor Sanvers discourse, Self-Hatred, So be careful out there, So much angstier than I anticipated, So this fic is really breaking the mold, Some amount of sexual content, Swearing, This is the first fic where Kara/Lena isn't super central to the fic, and important
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-05
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-28 11:49:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10830672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lola_McGee/pseuds/Lola_McGee
Summary: A character study of Alex Danver's relation to a lot of her own issues.





	Her Reflection

**Author's Note:**

> My depiction of Kara and Alex's relationship here is heavily built around Alsike's "Different Ways to be Human" http://archiveofourown.org/works/10644426, though that one is a far happier read. And fantastic. Each time I read it, I end up pulling quotes out of the fic because they fit me perfectly. 
> 
> My favourite one is “...because I kept thinking that if I were into girls, I don't think I'd be able to walk down the street without falling over myself at all these pretty girls. And then, well, it started to be pretty hard walking down the street.” And if that doesn't sell the fic to you, then I have no idea what will.
> 
> So yeah, this is Alex, and I have a lot of Alex Danvers feels. I love Alex and she is so important and valid and has so many issues. And they're so diverse too! Like, yes, Lena has a shitton of issues and they're complex, but their root cause is fairly contained: she's a Luthor and everyone around her who she loves has disappointed and/or hurt her in some way. Alex, on the other hand, has equally numerous and complicated issues, but the causes of them are far more varied: part of it is that she was heavily closeted. Another part of it is that she constantly has to compare herself to Kara. And another is her own strained relation with her mother, and so on. Alex Danver needs to be nurtured and cared for y'all.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy!

_(Sometimes, when she looks in the mirror, she sees her mother.)_

Alexandra Danvers knows, on some deep level, that her mother never quite understood Alex, never showed that she cared in the way that Alex needed. That this wasn’t the fault of her alien sister, that Kara showing up one day didn’t suddenly make her own mother change how she treated Alex. Kara showing up simply gave Alex something to compare her treatment too. On an even deeper level, it still feels like it.

(Sometimes, when Alex Danvers looks in the mirror, she wonders what her mother sees. If her precious Alexandra has disappeared, somewhere, to be replaced by a near stranger. An odd creature named Alex, not Alexandra.)

Even when the pain sharpens in Alex, when the anger beneath the surface bubbled over her own surface of daughterly love, she never bears any anger toward Kara. She blames Kara during these moments, yes. But she would never, could never, be able to be upset with Kara; angry at Kara without the undercurrent of concern. She loves Kara more than anything in this world; in the entire goddamn universe. Even in the fucking multiverse, if what Kara told her about Barry is true. More than Maggie, more than her job, more than her morals, even more than her mother.

(Though that isn’t a dig at her mother, no. She loves her mother. It’s just that nothing, nobody, can ever compare to how much Alex loves her sister.)

If it was anyone beside Kara were the one to rescue her, stop her plane from crashing, to save her life, of course she wouldn’t yell at them. She is a complete and utter badass, but she’s not ungrateful. If someone saves your life, then you thank them. If your little sister, however, saves your life by doing something _so fucking idiotic and definitely put herself in danger, and you’re not sure you’ll survive if something horrible happens to her, but you suspect you wouldn’t?_ Well then, a little yelling is the right thing to do.

The same thing cannot be said about anyone else in her life.

(The same thing cannot be said about mother.)

_(Sometimes, when she looks in the mirror, she sees her sister.)_

None of this is to say, however, that Kara didn’t mold the face Alex sees, the face she wears, into the one it is now, for better or worse. She, for example, wouldn’t be half the agent she is nowadays. She wouldn’t be a tenth the woman. Kara is the steel in her spine.

(Of course, a steel spine isn’t always a positive. It’s inflexible, slow to change. If not actively worked on, a misshapen steel spine won’t fall into its natural place, won’t ever feel _comfortable_.)

Kara is the reason that Alex is closed off, prickly, toward anyone and everyone. Protecting a secret worth more than her own life would do that to a person. That someone, anyone, has to carefully pry open her defences in order to access her. Nobody gets an easy path in.

(Except Maggie, it seems. Except Kara and Maggie.)

Kara is the reason, for example, (so very prominently) it took her until she was 27 to learn she is gay. To discover something so fundamental to herself at least 13 years after the “late bloomers” figure it out. Kara is the reason she never slotted the pieces together before.

Kara never intended for these things to happen. Of course she didn’t. She is constitutionally incapable of ever intending to hurt Alex; there is nearly nothing that she is surer of.

(These things still did happen, though. They were still Kara’s fault. Even if it wasn’t out of malice, Kara is to blame.)

_(Sometimes, when she looks in the mirror, she sees a dark, distorted version of herself.)_

Alex wonders, sometimes, whether her partying habit came from how closeted she was. It makes sense, to a certain extent. And isn’t that how closeted gay people act in the movies? Self-destructive, irrational, hedonistic. People in the closet were supposed to be miserable, being unable to share (or even sometimes just know) their own secret. And Alex had no clue about her own secret.

But, every time she considers the thought, feels around its rough edges, checking to see what the issue was, it rings hollow. She wasn’t actively miserable. One some level she might have known she wasn’t happy, but it felt so fucking good.

(She still remembers the first time she awoke after a blackout. Vomit over her tank top, small chunks of some undigested meal that she’s not sure she ate. Crusted drool on the pillow underneath her, head contracting painfully. Light banging around her eyes too harshly. But she was alive, had proven it by… whatever she had gotten up to the night before.)

(Hangovers fucking suck, true. But the afterglow of having lived. Well, that fucking tasted of victory.)

She had been drunk, teetering on the edge of incoherence, the moment she realized that she wanted Vicky Donaghue. She wanted to throw her best friend onto a bed, bite her lower lip, and have two fingers inside of her. The want, the _need_ , crashed over her like a tidal wave, turning her legs to jelly as she disappeared into a bedroom upstairs, lock the door, and manage to shrug off some of her clothes (specifically her boots and pants) before passing out for the night. In the morning, she had written it off as a drunken misconception, and promptly went to very studiously never think about it for the next decade.

(And if Vicky’s face popped up in Alex’s mind when her hand was pressed between her own legs, if Vicky’s smell didn’t come to mind moments before she peaked, if Alex didn’t sigh Vicky’s name on the come down… Well, people act weird when horny, right?)

She had been drunk many times before that moment regarding Vicky Donaghue. Sure, she was almost certainly still closeted at the time, but before that event she had never, for a single moment, entertained a woman in a sexual or romantic way.

So no, her partying days begun before her closeted days. Maybe she just wasn’t capable of being honestly happy.

(The thought still plagues her, from time to time. That not only could she not be happy when she was a partier, but she isn’t capable of being honestly happy now, when she’s in a committed relationship, her world expanded and her bond with Kara as strong as ever.)

(That the time she found herself in a shower, J’onn spraying cold water on her head, desperately trying to clean her up, to get her shit together. That that time didn’t actually mean anything, that her future relative moderation didn’t actually improve things.)

Or perhaps, she’s just an alcoholic. Her story may feel bigger and grander than that; that she isn’t some kind of simple alcoholic who can’t help but live by the bottle, that her reasons to drink are far more complex than that. But isn’t that what every alcoholic thinks? That they don’t have a problem, that their drinking habits are legitimate?

Alex isn’t stupid enough to believe that she is somehow special. Kara’s special. Maggie’s special. Her mother is special. Alex? Alex is just Alex. Unabashedly awesome in some regards, but decidedly average in the rest. And her reasons to drink are definitely in the “rest” category.

(She tries not to think about why she doesn’t stop drinking all together. Doesn’t want to let the cliche “I can stop whenever I want” to cross her thoughts. To ever betray her by passing over her tongue and through her lips.)

_(Sometimes, when she looks in the mirror, she sees her lover.)_

Alex’s been improving on the drinking, however, since she started seeing Maggie. Maggie never asks for it, never makes a comment. Fuck, Maggie sometimes outpaces her for drinks. But Alex just feels less like she needs another beer while she’s pressed into Maggie’s side. Doesn’t need to get up and top off her glass, when Maggie is reflecting upon a case, sighing and thinking her thoughts out loud, absorbing Alex’s points with a calculating look on her face. Doesn’t need to seek out a liquid buzz, when an all natural one was spreading through her body every time Maggie’s smile brings out her dimples.

It’s in this way that she knows she loves Maggie. That Maggie means so much to Alex, that she can strip off every mask, every layer of the suit that is Alex Danvers, and simply be Alex Danvers. And she’s fairly certain Maggie feels the same; the same comfortability, the same sense of shared nakedness fostered between them.

But, unlike Kara, unlike her own mother, Alex’s and Maggie’s love for each other scares Alex shitless. Because Kara’s love, her mother’s love, those were never in doubt. Could never be in doubt. Loving them never felt like it could possibly be a bad decision. Never felt like a bad decision. Maggie’s love, though. Maggie’s love is intense.

(And not intense in the comfortable way that Kara’s is. Not in the kind of intensity that fills Alex up, puts a little perk in her soul, wraps around her in an encompassing hug. The kind that can purge any doubt she has that she’s enough.)

(No, it’s the reckless kind of intense, the kind that demands irrational decisions. The kind that doesn’t ask for, doesn’t want, contemplation and strategizing. The kind that feels like whatever is happening needs to happen immediately. There’s a reason Maggie and Alex are highly discouraged from spending more than twenty-four hours together without seeing any of their friends or family, at least any of them that are responsible: J’onn under any circumstance, James unless it’s vigilantism, Lena unless it has anything to do with Kara, and Kara unless Kara gets too excited and joins in. The kind of reason that stinks of Las Vegas and accidentally stumbling upon an alien card shark ring, and both of them, in two unrelated incidences, getting kidnapped by said alien card shark ring. The kind that reeks with thousands of dollars of property damage and valuable equipment usage.)

(The kind that probably feels like Romeo’s love for Juliet, and Juliet’s returned love. The kind of love that leaves a body or two or three at the end of it.)

(Maggie lives with an intensity that shocks Alex each and every day. It doesn’t shock her because it’s new or unwelcome. It shocks her with how familiar, how comfortable, it is.)

_(Sometimes, when she looks in the mirror, she sees her own reflection, clear as day.)_

It’s hard for Alex, a lot of the time, hard for her not to imagine these relationships as isolated from one another; each acting independently upon her. It’s far too easy to believe that Maggie’s intensity isn’t offset, partially, by Kara’s care. That Kara’s excitement isn’t balanced by her mother’s realism. That her mother’s inability to connect isn’t ameliorated by Maggie’s eagerness to. That her own hedonism of earlier years only sharpens and clarifies what she truly needs to be happy.

(It is really easy for Alex to imagine these parts of her life separate. That she is a planet orbiting several different stars, only one star at a time having gravitational influence over her. Easy to forget that, if nothing else, Kara influences her enough, has enough of a constant gravitational force pulling her, to make her think of such a metaphor in the first place.)

But… But… her favourite days are the one she realizes how utterly wrong she is. That these separation of relationships is as much a mirage as it is true. That these ways of _loving_ Alexandra Danvers each affects the others, each slowly contributes to the woman that she is today..

And she’s not the only one to err. Her mother is also wrong, that she is Alex Danvers and there is nothing wrong with that. And Kara is wrong too, each time she hurriedly defends Alex being separate from the imagined younger girl that was Alexandra. Alex is Alexandra, and Alexandra is Alex. Both exist simultaneously.

(And maybe, just maybe, Alex is a star on her own, one of many stars orbiting all the others in a delicate dance. And maybe, just maybe, she sees who it is in the reflection. She sees Alex Danvers.)

**Author's Note:**

> So, that's all the ones I have planned. I got a great suggestion by JeezusGut (in the last works', "Her Job", comment section) to maybe do one about Lillian Luthor. And, I sort of have a plan, but it'll be angsty. So I'll be working on it for a bit, and I'd love to hear any other suggestions for characters I can do, or anything else.
> 
> In the mean time, I'm also possibly working on a far more lighthearted fic (have to decide how I want to go about it). I'll warn you, though, it won't be a character study (unless you count excessive reflection on what kind of ladies Kara is attracted to, and how Kryptonian genders work, to be a character study). So it'll have to include more than ramblings. And if you think what's above is bad, I'm far worse at descriptions of even basic movement.
> 
> And like always: kudos, comments and bookmarks give me life! Especially comments since I get to hear what you guys think, which is super important.


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